exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Yea, how? On, let's say, MacOS X Catalina. I got USB floppy-drive (ThinkPad dedicated) which reads and writes Atari ST formatted floppies perfectly fine (DD) but I have no idea, how to write whole image file. Is it possible or need I some PC/Linux machine?

arti040 wrote: 24 Aug 2022 23:40 Yea, how? On, let's say, MacOS X Catalina. I got USB floppy-drive (ThinkPad dedicated) which reads and writes Atari ST formatted floppies perfectly fine (DD) but I have no idea, how to write whole image file. Is it possible or need I some PC/Linux machine?

I've not tried this, but you may be able to use the HxC Floppy Emulator Software to "Load" the .st image, then ""Export" it as "IMG file (RAW Sector file format)", and then use dd to write that out to the floppy drive.

This might only work if the floppy is already formatted with the same parameters as the image you're trying to write. Or it may not work at all. :lol:

You can load any ST image with Hatari and delete all files on it and copy new files from a GEMDOS Drive in Hatari on it ...

derkom wrote: 25 Aug 2022 06:21 I've not tried this, but you may be able to use the HxC Floppy Emulator Software to "Load" the .st image, then ""Export" it as "IMG file (RAW Sector file format)", and then use dd to write that out to the floppy drive.

This might only work if the floppy is already formatted with the same parameters as the image you're trying to write. Or it may not work at all. :lol:

That’s how I do it @derkom and as you say if a disk has some special protection etc that is not possible. This utility just allows you to copy files to an .st disk or off of one.

I think the problem you have is that .ST files are not directly understood by DD, so there is no way you'll be able to use one to write a disk with DD.

I think the solution offered by @derkom is the most likely way forward and then write the resulting IMG file to FDD using DD. It might also be possible to convert the .ST images using GreaseWeasel, but I'm not 100% sure.

The slightly different solution is to get a Gotek, then you won't have to convert .ST files to floppy, you just run them direct from that.

From what I rememeber, FlashFloppy doesn't support .ST files.

stephen_usher wrote: 25 Aug 2022 09:55 From what I rememeber, FlashFloppy doesn't support .ST files.

All my Goteks are FlashFloppy and support .ST files just fine. List of supported file formats is here: FlashFloppy supported file types

The Greaseweazel Wiki specifies this: "Greaseweazle also supports writing to floppy disks, from a range of image file formats including those commonly used for online preservation (ADF, IPF, DSK, IMG, HFE, ...)"

The ellipsis suggests other file formats, so I tested quickly and it seems happy to read and write .ST files :)

:dualthumbup: :)

stephen_usher wrote: 25 Aug 2022 09:55 From what I rememeber, FlashFloppy doesn't support .ST files.

You are probably thinking of *.MSA?

Wow, wow... slowly :-) So, you suggest to set up some emulated environment, mount there images I want and then just copy files to the floppy? If that works, I can try but isn't so, some images are has their own format so coping the files won't wrok?